audience. When you are hearing a matter be-
tween party and party, if you chance to be
pinched with the colic, you make faces like 84
mummers, set up the bloody flag against all
patience, and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dis-
miss the controversy bleeding, the more en-
tangled by your hearing: all the peace you make 88
in their cause is, calling both the parties knaves.
You are a pair of strange ones.
Bru. Come, come, you are well understood
to be a perfecter giber for the table than a 92
necessary bencher in the Capitol.
Men. Our very priests must become mockers
if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects
as you are. When you speak best unto the 96
purpose it is not worth the wagging of your
beards; and your beards deserve not so honour-
able a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion, or
to be entombed in an ass's pack-saddle. Yet you 100
must be saying Martius is proud; who, in a
cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors
since Deucalion, though peradventure some of
the best of 'em were hereditary hangmen. Good 104
den to your worships: more of your conversa-
tion would infect my brain, being the herdsmen
of the beastly plebeians: I will be bold to take
my leave of you. 108
Enter Volumnia, Virgilia, and Valeria.
85 mummers: rustic actors
set . . . flag: proclaim violent war
91–93 Cf. n.
97, 98 not worth . . . beards: not worth the effort of opening and closing your mouths
99 botcher's: patching tailor's
102 estimation: valuation
103 Deucalion: the Greek Noah
104, 105 Good den: good evening
